Spotlight | Election Integrity in Texas with TPPF’s Chuck DeVore and Garrett Cocetti

Is Texas doing enough to protect election integrity? With 254 counties administering elections, questions surrounding voter registration, paper ballots, election fraud, and local election transparency are becoming increasingly important ahead of the next Texas legislative session.

In this episode of Spotlight, Chuck DeVore, Chief National Initiatives Officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, sits down with Garrett Cocetti, who is researching election integrity reforms, to discuss potential changes to how Texas conducts elections, maintains voter rolls, and investigates election fraud.

Drawing on his firsthand experience serving as an election judge in Texas, Cocetti explains why he believes the state should adopt standardized, hand-marked paper ballots, consolidate local elections to increase voter participation, and improve oversight of voter registration databases.

Topics discussed include:

🇺🇸 Hand-Marked Paper Ballots: Should Texas replace ballot-marking machines with standardized paper ballots across all 254 counties?

🗳️ Uniform Election Dates: Could moving low-turnout school board, bond, and municipal elections to November increase voter participation and reduce election costs?

🇺🇸 Foreign Money in Texas Elections: How could foreign funding influence local ballot initiatives, and should Texas prohibit foreign contributions to these campaigns?

🪪 Voter ID Requirements: Should state-issued identification cards for noncitizens explicitly state that the holder is not eligible to vote?

📋 Centralized Voter Registration: Could a statewide voter registration database improve the accuracy of voter rolls and help identify registration discrepancies?

⚖️ Election Fraud Enforcement: How has the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ Stephens decision affected the Texas Attorney General’s ability to prosecute election fraud, and what reforms could lawmakers consider?

From election security and voter identification to government accountability and election transparency, this conversation explores proposed reforms and the debate over how best to safeguard the electoral process.